


Uncontainable

by Samsara



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Backstory, Bullying, Domestic Violence, Gen, Illegitimacy, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, M/M, Single Parents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 21:36:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5349404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samsara/pseuds/Samsara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was six when he first heard his father call him a "mistake."<br/>Semi Eita is now eighteen, and he's anything but.</p><p>[Semi Eita headcanon backstory, warning for instances of domestic violence and child abuse.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncontainable

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhh so I've been planning this for a while. It's not up to par with my usual writing but I figure this writing is simplistic but to the point for what I want to write. If you're a user subscriber, you'll know that my writing is usually much more descriptive. So I'm trying something new here with concise descriptions, focusing more on atmosphere and brevity to get my story across. I want it to feel as if we're not getting the full picture (because we're not) since it's partly from a child's perspective.
> 
> Like I said in the summary, warning for instances of domestic violence and child abuse, but I'm trying to handle those things delicately since I've experienced some of it myself.
> 
> (For my readers who also read Hot Pink, that fic is on hiatus until some time after Christmas. My betas are currently unavailable.)
> 
> Anyways, enjoy my un-beta'd prologue :D

“Mom?”

Semi Eita is six years old when he sees his father strike his mother the first time. He didn’t know it then, but he does now, that this happened almost nightly for the first several years of his life. He watches as his father turns and slams the door, storming out of their home, Semi’s mother on her knees in the hallway, picking up the broken shards of glass that came from a shattered bottle of something alcoholic.

His mother looks up, her amber eyes swollen and glassy from crying, the speckles of a bruise forming beneath one of them. Her hair is naturally dark, much like Semi’s own (as a teenager he’d discover the love of dyeing it frequently). “Eita, no, go back to your room, you’ll get cut.” She manages to choke out, trying to shoo her son back to his room. She’s a young mother, having had her son at only nineteen. Their home is nothing spectacular -- it belonged to her grandmother before she passed, having left it in her will for her granddaughter -- but the poor locks on the door leaves something to be desired.

She winces, a shard of glass nicking her finger. Semi knows something is going on with his parents, but he doesn’t ask. But he does know kisses make things better. He takes his mother’s hand and kisses the small cut and offers her a smile that softens the glass and cures her bruises.

She wipes at her eyes and stands, setting the collected glass on a napkin which she discards quickly before returning to her son. She puts her arms tightly around her child, holding him close.

“I’m so sorry you had to see that, Eita.” she coos as she lifts her son up into her arms. She steps around the damage zone from the shattered bottle, carrying her son up the stairs. “Sometimes mommy and daddy have really bad arguments, and that’s why daddy sometimes leaves for a few days.”

Semi curls up in his mother’s arms, resting his head against her neck and shoulder, arms clinging tightly to her in her maternal embrace. “The TV says that when parents fight like that they get divorced.” He speaks bluntly, but that’s just how he is with his mother. She’s taken aback a moment, but she laughs a little at her son’s comment.

“Well, the TV would be right, if mommy and daddy were married.” She says reluctantly, combing her fingers through her child’s soft mess of hair as she steps on to the landing of the upstairs hallway. “Mommy and daddy never got married because. . .” Her voice trails off and she enters Semi’s room. His western style bed’s blankets are thrown to the side, a small childs blanket bundled up in the corner between the wall and his pillows. His room is clean because he’s never had much in the line of toys or games. So his room is plain. For the most part. He likes sports and he likes art so a few scattered pictures are taped to the wall. Some of various sporting events, some of clothing -- he loves to draw clothes.

“I heard daddy call me a mistake.” Semi murmurs as he snuggles against his mother as she sits on the edge of the mattress with him still in her arms. She doesn’t know what to say. Her son is only six, and he’s already heard foul things being said about him. “What did he mean by that?” Her fingers comb through his hair as she lifts him from her grasp and sets him in bed, smiling.

“Your father says a lot of things he doesn’t understand.” She says sweetly as she retrieves the bundled up baby blanket and lays it out across her son as she begins tucking him in again. She’s thinking quickly and on her toes. Her son doesn’t need to hear about how he wasn’t planned. How he was illegitimate. How he was the product of assault. Because for her, it does not matter. He (thankfully) inherited none of his father’s facial features. He’s beautiful, and he is her son and no matter who assisted in his creation, she loves him with all her heart.

“But what’s he mean?” Semi’s voice is defiant but his mother won’t have it. He’s too young to hear the truth about it just yet. She brings the blankets up, Semi raising his arms so he can rest them atop the comforter.

“Daddy means absolutely nothing, because he doesn’t know what a ‘mistake’ is.” It’s mostly said to make herself feel better as she leans down to kiss Semi atop the head, watching from the corner of her eye as his face scrunches up. It’s endearing to watch him squirm as she puffs out her cheeks as she kisses his cheek, leaving a little raspberry on his skin, causing her son to yelp with a loud giggle and shove at his mother just slightly.

Semi Eita is six years old when he discovers that the world’s not so nice.

And though his mother showered him with kisses, wrapping him up in her arms, protecting him from what was out there in the world, he wouldn’t always be safe.

His mother leaves once Semi settles down and the clock shows a little past one-thirty in the morning. She has to get his lunch ready for the following morning. She can’t keep relying on the other mothers at Semi’s school to provide for him. She’s young but she is capable. And she can’t bring herself to show her son how hard it’s been.

Semi wakes up for school in five hours.

* * *

Semi Eita has been in elementary school for only two months when his father begins to act up. Without Semi home during the day, his father was finding more things to complain about. More things to blame on his mother. He would show up while Semi was gone, spend a few hours parading around the house and be gone before Semi was due to come home.

School for Semi, was his favorite thing. He wasn’t particularly a good student, but at the age of six, he enjoyed learning. He enjoyed making friends.

At the age of six, Semi Eita makes a friend that would last him through middle school and high school. An eerie looking boy with wide eyes and a perpetually pensive look upon his face. He goes by Tendou Satori, and Semi Eita is quickly taken with him. It’s only a few weeks into school’s start that Semi approaches him during lunch and says “I like your shoes.” and sits next to him with his bento.

Tendou Satori doesn’t say anything the first time and continues to eat his lunch quietly. He doesn’t so much as look up at the overly friendly boy sitting next to him. He wants to eat and begin cleaning and go back to their lessons. Semi has no idea that the other students have been picking on him.

The second time Semi sits next to him, he brings over a pudding cup. He asked his mom for a second one before leaving that morning, wanting to bring it for his new friend. As far as Tendou Satori is concerned, he doesn’t have any friends. He still accepts the pudding cup, tapping it from its container with the caramel in tact, impressing Semi with his precision.

The third time Semi sits next to him, he goes on about how he likes having a friend. Tendou, thinks otherwise, and finds the mouthy boy annoying. Although he wonders if there’s pudding again. Semi annoys him, and he’s quite sure Semi is teasing him behind his back.

But on the fourth day that Semi sits next to him, he doesn’t say a word to Tendou. He sits down and remains quiet. He has no lunch that day. It’s the morning after he saw his mother get hurt. She was going to make him lunch but Semi came downstairs the next morning to her sleeping in the kitchen. He couldn’t ask her to get up. She looked sleepy. And at six years of age, Semi Eita brought a blanket into the kitchen to drape across his sleeping mother, kissed her on the head and left for school on his own. Without lunch.

Tendou looks up at Semi, watching how the boy simply sits there with his hands in his lap, seeming to be waiting for lunch to end. Tendou eats slowly, chewing and swallowing as he follows Semi’s eyes to his lap, then back toward his face -- he’s tired. He can tell. His eyes are puffy, like he hasn’t gotten any sleep.

“No lunch today?” Tendou asks, blinking slowly as Semi looks up, rubbing at his eyes. He’s been trying not to cry since he saw his mother get hit. His sleeve is damp just from a moment on his eyes. He wants to cry, but last time he cried, his dad locked him in his room. He’s not allowed to.

“I-I already ate.” Semi said quickly, sniffling a little. No amount of sniffles could quiet the rather obnoxious gurgling from the boys stomach to counter his lie.

“No you didn’t.” Tendou says as he overturns the lid of his lunchbox to place half his sandwich on it with a handful of cherry tomatoes. “Lunch just started and you’re a liar.” Tendou looked up, luring Semi’s gaze upwards too as he slid the lunch lid toward him. “And if you’re gonna cry just cry, don’t pretend you’re not gonna when it’s really obvious.”

At the age of six (and for Tendou Satori, the age of seven), a bizarre friendship is formed between these two boys. As Semi bites into the half a sandwich that Tendou has given him, he lets himself sniffle and begin crying. Not because he was upset over a lack of lunch (that’s Tendou’s guess) but because he’s sad about his mother. Semi loves his mom and he doesn’t understand why bad things are happening. He cries because he’s confused.

Tendou only thinks the boy to his side is crying because he’s hungry. He doesn’t think much else of it, but he knows to repay kindness with kindness. Semi is a weird boy. He wants to be his friend, despite Tendou’s creepy face. But he kind of likes that. His mom said he needed to make friends. He’s hesitant, but Tendou reaches over and pulls Semi into a half-hearted, one armed hug.

“My names Satori. Mom told me I’m s’posed to let people use my surname but if we’re gonna be friends, you can call me Satori instead.” He’s a bit scared. He knows what happened the last time he tried to make friends.

_Freak! Creep! Monster!_

Semi looks up, his cheeks now stained with lines from where his tears have been falling. He’s cried into the sandwich, causing some of the bread to get soggy. If he weren’t still voraciously devouring it, Tendou would have offered the other half to him as well. He sniffles again, silently loving the lazy half-hug, nodding. “I’m Semi Eita. Mom calls me Eita. Or Eicchan, but I think I’m getting too big for Eicchan now.”

“Are you from England?” Tendou asks, removing his arm to pick some raw cucumber from his lunch. “Ei-chan is a weird name if you’re not.”

Semi sniffled again, sitting up straighter. “No! Ei _cchan_. Hear it? It’s a nickname!”

Tendou blinked and spoke through his chews. “Still sounds like Ei-chan to me.”

Semi’s lips form into a rather annoyed pout as he continues to chow down on the rest of his sandwich before deciding he would much rather shove Tendou than let himself be hugged.

He supposes he’s made a friend.

Tendou laughs at Semi’s face.

He supposes he’s made a friend too.

* * *

  
At the age of eighteen, Semi Eita has come to understand a lot of things about himself. He knows he was a mistake. He knows his mother deserves the world. And he knows that Tendou Satori is one of the biggest tools he’s ever met, and likely the best friend he could have ever had. Semi also knows he’s attracted to men, somewhat overpowered when it comes to serving in volleyball and positively in love with fashion design.

At the age of eighteen, Semi Eita knows a lot of things about his family that most eighteen year olds should never know. He knows that his father has a life of (legalized) crime behind him, and unfortunately so does his mother. He knows that he’s struggling in school and that he wants to make his mother happy.

At the age of eighteen, Semi Eita is a former childhood volleyball star with quite the resume on him, but absolutely no scouts from any universities. At the age of eighteen, Semi Eita is kind of washed up.

But he’s not giving up just yet.

At the age of eighteen, Semi Eita has been to more parties than he can count. Slept with far too many people he can’t recall the names off. And utterly destroyed plenty of volleyball dreams on the court. And off, if one wants to suggest a few well placed intimidation tactics before matches were the cause of it all.

At the age of eighteen, Semi Eita is a goddamn, motherfucking mess, and he never asked to be that way. After all. He’s eighteen.

Semi Eita is a force of nature that has only just begun.

He’s uncontainable.

 

 


End file.
